[geeks] Living in Washington D.C.

[Aaron Finley]

I wish to follow up to my previous message regarding my job search.
Thanks to all who replied and gave advice in response to that message.
Last week, I had three interviews with IBM, and they seemed to really
take a liking to me. One division of IBM said "you're hired" within 15
minutes of beginning the interview and when I was received the offer
yesterday, I was nearly knocked off my feet.

In any case, the job's duties will be located in the D.C. Metro area.
I am under the impression that D.C. is an extremely expensive place to
live. I am not a big city person and have no real desire to actually
live inside the city. I was looking at apartments in the surrounding
area, including Rockville and Montogomery County.

It appears that to somewhat duplicate the living style I have now
(1400 sq. ft townhome), I will be increasing my cost of rent, from
$450 to around $650-700 (split 1/2 with another person). That's really
no big deal, but I was curious if any of you have recommendations for
where to live to commute into D.C. and if any of you live in these
areas, if you could help me out by giving me an idea of how much
utilities are going to cost.

I'm looking for something in a suburbia/rural setting, but which is a
15-20 minute drive from a metro line station. I found this while
searching last night and I was impressed:

http://www.avalondecoverly.com/

My girlfriend has three more years of university left, so I'm planning
to continue to apartment live for those three years and be as
aggressive as possible in my job in order to hopefully buy a house
immediately upon her graduation.

-- Aaron Finley